France's largest labour union may have overplayed its hand

Paris

THERE is a back story to the strikes that have made life miserable for millions across France in recent weeks, and it isn't about high unemployment, immigration or the other issues confronting the country and its increasingly unpopular president, Francois Hollande.

It has to do with raw labour politics - and the disproportionate role played by the General Confederation of Labor, France's oldest union, which has ties to the once-powerful Communist Party, from which it has kept a Marxist-Leninist call to class struggle.

With just under 700,000 members, most of them in the public sector, the CGT, as it is commonly known, has moved its fight against a proposed labour law beyond the streets.

It has spearheaded mass demonstrations, and small numbers of militant strikers have blocked the gates of oil refineries, nuclear power stations, wholesale food markets and waste treatment facilitie…